The Israeli military has forced Palestinians to enter potentially booby-trapped houses and tunnels in Gaza to avoid putting its troops in harm’s way, according to an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldier and five former detainees who said they were victims of the practice.
The soldier, who said his unit held two Palestinian prisoners for the explicit purpose of using them as human shields to probe dangerous places, said the practice was prevalent among Israeli units in Gaza.
“We told them to enter the building before us,” he explained. “If there are any booby traps, they will explode and not us.”
It was so common in the Israeli military that it had a name: “mosquito protocol.”
The exact scale and scope of the practice by the Israeli military is not known. But the testimony of both the soldier and five civilians shows that it was widespread across the territory: in northern Gaza, Gaza City, Khan Younis, and Rafah.
The soldier explained that, at first, his unit, which at the time was in northern Gaza, used standardized procedures before entering a suspect building: sending in a dog or punching a hole through its side with a tank shell or an armored bulldozer.
The Israeli military has used Palestinians as human shields in Gaza, soldier and former detainees say. CNN NEWS
But one day this spring, the soldier said an intelligence officer showed up with two Palestinian detainees – a 16-year-old boy and 20-year-old man – and told the troops to use them as human shields before entering buildings. The intelligence officer claimed they were connected to Hamas.
When he questioned the practice, the soldier said one of his commanders told him, “‘It’s better that the Palestinian will explode and not our soldiers.’”
“It’s quite shocking, but after a few months in Gaza you [tend not to] think clearly,” the soldier said. “You’re just tired. Obviously, I prefer that my soldiers live. But, you know, that’s not how the world works.”
The soldier said that he and his comrades refused to carry on with the practice after two days and confronted their senior commander about it. Their commander, who first told them not to “think about international law,” saying that their own lives were “more important,” ultimately relented, releasing the two Palestinians, the soldier said.
The fact that they were released, he said, made it clear to him that they had no affiliation with Hamas, “that they are not terrorists.”
CNN was connected with the soldier by Breaking the Silence, an organization that provides a forum for Israeli soldiers to speak out and verifies their testimony.
Breaking the Silence provided CNN with three photos depicting the Israeli military using Palestinians as human shields in Gaza. One haunting photograph shows two soldiers urging a civilian forward in a scene of devastation in northern Gaza. In a second, two civilians used as human shields sit bound and blindfolded. A third shows a soldier guarding a bound civilian.
The Israeli military has used Palestinians as human shields in Gaza, soldier and former detainees say. CNN NEWS
In a statement, the Israeli military told CNN: “The IDF’s directives and guidelines strictly prohibit the use of detained Gaza civilians for military operations. The relevant protocols and instructions are routinely clarified to soldiers in the field during the conflict.”
International law forbids the use of civilians to shield military activity, or to forcibly involve civilians in military operations. The Israeli Supreme Court explicitly banned the practice in 2005, after rights groups filed a complaint about the military’s use of Palestinian civilians to knock on the doors of suspected militants in the West Bank. Justice Aharon Barak at the time called the practice “cruel and barbaric.”
Israel has long accused Hamas of using civilians in Gaza as human shields, embedding military infrastructure in civilian areas – allegations Hamas has denied. There is ample evidence for it: weapons located inside homes, tunnels dug beneath residential neighborhoods and rockets fired from those same neighborhoods in the densely packed territory.
The Israeli military frequently cites those practices in blaming Hamas for the extraordinary civilian death toll in Gaza, where Israel has dropped bombs on those same residential areas. Israeli attacks have killed more than 42,000 Palestinians in Gaza since October last year, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. The United Nations says that most of the dead are civilians.
“We saw Hamas using Palestinians as human shields,” the soldier said. “But for me it’s more painful with my own army. Hamas is a terrorist organization. The IDF shouldn’t use terrorist organization practices.”
